The Mad Man With the Box
by Curious Ideas
Summary: The Doctor arrived on Pandora only a few minutes before Jake did, and he agrees: tails are cool.
1. Tails are Cool

Up above, a branch creaked. Somewhere in the distance, a thanator thundered past, but it was soon gone. It was quiet.

Suddenly, an alien, thumping, grinding noise rang through the forest, and with it, an even more alien object faded into existence. It was big, blue and at least a century out of date. There was a camp of aliens nearby, and they would have understood the object instantly, if only because they could read its sign: POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX.

The door opened. "Ah, Pand—glur—" the Doctor choked, diving back inside and closing the door behind him. Nothing happened for a few minutes. Then, the Doctor appeared again, saying, "...Apart from the atmosphere, it's brilliant. Just don't annoy the—"

"Doctor, what do you mean _apart_ from the atmosphere? What am I breathing?" said Rory, following close behind.

The Doctor kneeled down to look at something. "Just sulfur hydroxide and... oh, yes, carbon monoxide. Don't worry about it, it gets eaten by the jiggery-pokery."

Rory spluttered, pulled himself together and turned to Amy. "Am I the only one who's worried about that?"

She hesitated for a moment before saying, "Yes. We're alive, aren't we?"

"Well, yes, but carbon monoxide _is_ toxic."

"Rory, you managed to survive for 20 centuries made of plastic, a little bit of poison won't hurt you," joked the Doctor, still watching his plant intently. Amy walked over and knelt down beside him.

"...It's glowing," she realized, and started laughing. "Ferns don't glow," she said in disbelief.

The Doctor poked at it, and Amy jumped as it zipped into the ground. He just smiled.

Meanwhile, Rory was looking at a nearby tree — glowing dimly, like everything else. There was an arrow embedded in it, quite easily as long as Rory himself and thicker than his arm. "Doctor..." he started.

"Yes? Oh. Ooooh..." said the Doctor, as he noticed the arrow.

"What sort of people live here?"

"That's odd," answered the Doctor in his usual disconnected fashion. "They don't miss and even if they did miss all the blood here's green and this thing's _old_..." he said as he waved the sonic screwdriver over it.

"Doctor," Rory interrupted.

"...Sorry, yes, they're—"

A thunderous crash shook the earth, and all three of them fell over.

"—not industrialized," he finished, getting up. He waved the screwdriver in the air. "...That's radio noise, thermal noise, even Q-wave traffic, someone's got a nice reactor..." He stopped, and consulted the as-bare-as-always screwdriver. "Nobody here should have a Clarke-Bester generator," he said, and ran off into the glowing forest.

Amy and Rory glanced at each other. Amy shrugged, and they ran to keep up.

There was an awful lot of running with the Doctor.

—

They caught up with him as he stood on the edge of the forest, looking over the crest of a hill. "Oh," he said, as he came to a stop. Amy slid up behind him. Although she didn't say anything, she had the same surprised look on her face.

" They're _not_...?" Rory began.

" They're not. This isn't them. This can't be them, they'd be really annoyed if this was them, _that_ certainly isn't them," the Doctor said, looking up slightly.

What they saw, near the foot of the hill, was a military base. It was huge, busy and blocky. Jeeps drove along tarmac roads among angular, metallic buildings, and lines of gray smoke trickled out of several chimney stacks. The Doctor watched an aircraft of some sort, the same gunmetal gray as the rest of the base, lower itself vertically towards a landing pad near the perimeter. He adjusted his bowtie, and turned to his two companions.

"If I told you you shouldn't try to wander nonchalantly into a military base, because it's really, really dangerous," asked Rory, half-hardheartedly, "would you listen?"

"No, sorry," the Doctor said, turning around and heading down the hill.

The three of them ended up on one side of a hangar at exactly the moment the aircraft they had seen earlier landed on the other. The back door of it swung open, and the Doctor urgently ushered the three of them around a corner when he saw what it was carrying: a squad of troops. They waited, peering around the corner, while the troops marched out and past them. "Doctor, what's going on?" Amy asked.

"I don't know," he said, stepping out. He ducked back as he realized another group was coming, but simply stared as he saw what it was. It was a single man, wearing a gas mask and using an archaic, manual wheelchair. He rolled past without acknowledging them.

"Surely they've got rid of wheelchairs in the future?" Rory piped in.

"You get the neurosurgery to fix spines in 2051 and you don't get lightdrive until 2088, well, that's when it's officially released, though the prototypes came out as early as '85, but the malfunctions were a bit messy and-"

"Doctor, they're looking at us," interrupted Amy, watching a pair of suspicious guards some distance away.

"So they are. I wonder why that is. It's 'cause we're not wearing gas masks, isn't it?" he said, turning to Amy. The guards started walking towards them. "Oh, well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do."

"And when you can't do what the Romans do?" asked Rory.

"Run!" the Doctor said, doing exactly that.

They ran through the maze of buildings, taking three left turns, a shortcut sideways over a set of pipes, and then diving under an overpass before taking a final right turn to end up, out of breath, in front of a small door.

"We've lost them," said the Doctor, casually.

"Look, can we not do that again?" Rory panted. "Or at least, can we have some clue what's going on?"

"Right, yes, sorry, this is Pandora," the Doctor said. "It's one of the most beautiful places this side of Orion's arm, but last time I was here, humans weren't, and since this place is completely useless tactically, something else is going on, and I'd like to know what. Shall we invite ourselves in?" he said as he waved the screwdriver at the door. There was a click, and it swung open slightly.

Through the door, they found themselves in a small, grimy airlock, next to a small rack of respirators. The Doctor waved the sonic screwdriver against the inner door, before standing back, puzzled. "Why's that door so complicated?" he muttered.

"We're not stuck, are we?" asked Amy.

"No, but new plan," he said, reaching across to the rack. "Put a mask on and I'll ring the doorbell."

After a moment, the Doctor pressed a promising-looking switch by the door, and they all jumped at the sound of an actual doorbell. The trio shared incredulous looks while a voice said, "Mitchell's getting annoyed about this. He says just to lock you out next time, OK?"

"OK! Won't happen again!" replied the Doctor confidently. The door opened, and they ended up in yet another gray metal corridor, though the feeling of claustrophobia was lessened somewhat by the unusually high ceiling.

They walked along the tunnel for a few meters, before coming across two doors, almost opposite each other. The Doctor opened one as Amy listened at the other. She heard a deeper voice say, "I dissected a frog once," while the Doctor concluded, "Broom closet."

"Barging in might not be the best idea," suggested Rory meekly.

"It's worked so far," the Doctor said, barging through the door.

The door opened into a large circular room, lit by bright blue light coming from a central ring of a console, surrounded by a larger ring of devices that looked suspiciously like tanning beds. In the centre of the ring stood an older, tall woman, who snapped at the Doctor, "Who are you?"

The Doctor confidently flashed the psychic paper.

"The next coming of Vishnu? Haven't you lot taken enough piss already?," she said. The Doctor twisted his hand around to look at the paper himself.

"Oooh, it's never done that before," he said, but stopped as he realised the woman had turned to a younger man behind her.

"Why would the next incarnation of Vishnu have I.D. to that effect?" the man asked quizzically.

The woman turned back to the Doctor, "I'll try again: who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor, this is Amy and that's Rory," he said, gesturing around himself. "I don't think we're affiliated with Vishnu, but then again, I can't be sure."

"This isn't some deranged joke from Quaritch, is it?" the woman said, turning sideways to a man beside her in a wheelchair.

"They weren't on the shuttle, I'd have noticed," he replied.

"But then... how...?" she mused, before realizing something else. "We're wasting time. You," she told the man in the wheelchair, "get in."

"I'm sorry, I don't believe I caught your name?" the Doctor asked innocently.

The woman sighed and waited a few seconds, trying to calm herself down. "I'm Dr. Grace Augustine, this is Norm Spellman," she said, gesturing to the younger man behind her.

"And Anachronism Man?"

"Jake Sully," she said, indicating the man in the wheelchair, who was pulling himself into a tanning bed.

"I recognise that name," the Doctor said suddenly. This got stares not only from Jake himself, but also from Rory and Amy. "Except I can't remember why," he continued, with sudden confusion, "What year is this?"

"What _year_ is this?" Grace said, incredulously.

"2154," Norm provided.

"Right," said the Doctor, walking around the room to the nearest bed, waving the screwdriver as he went, "only last time I found something that odd I ended up having to reboot the universe from scratch, although, I suppose a chair's lighter than a mech which would be important here, but that doesn't really explain your lack of sp— no, the USMC _should _p—"

Suddenly, the Doctor froze. He slowly turned to focus on Jake, and said, "You didn't actually say the words, "It's too expensive for VA," did you?"

"No," he said.

"And nobody's actually told me you've been in the Marines, did they?"

"No."

Slowly, a smile crept across the Doctor's face, before he squatted down and read a nameplate attached to the bed. He stood up and turned back to Grace, before saying cheerily, "What are you doing with type 40 FBX neuron transceivers that needs 12 of them active at once?"

Grace framed the word, "You—" before she gave up and said, "It's for the avatars," gesturing to a window occupying one side of the room. On the other side was a white room, sterile and organised. In the room, in the manner of all mad scientists everywhere, were several gurneys, each supporting an unconscious, blue humanoid. "You know what an avatar is, don't you?"

"Doctor, are those gangers?" said Amy from beside the window.

"What are gangers?" said Grace and Norm simultaneously.

"OK, not gangers," she said.

"Gangers are robot duplicates from about forty years from now, though obviously the ones you've got aren't the same species, but—" Another ominous pause. "...Nevermind, can't fix that right now. Why do you need them?"

"The goons upstairs pissed off the natives, and now they shoot any human they find. We were trying to negotiate out of killing each other," Grace replied.

The Doctor was looking out of the window, through to the clean-room. "You on good terms?" he asked, flatly.

Grace sighed. "Not really, no. That's what happens when you slaughter the natives for the rock they're living on."

"Why does that sound familiar?" Rory suggested sarcastically.

"Gold was never worth $20 million a kilo, but yeah, we've not got rid of greed yet. Maybe in another 300 years."

There was a pause.

"I'd like to talk to them," the Doctor said suddenly.

"Can't be done," responded Grace curtly. "An avatar is grown to a specific genome, and they take five years to grow."

"Only because you're doing it in inefficiently. Everyone stay here, I'll be back in a sec," said the Doctor, vaulting over the ring in the centre of the room and heading for the door he came in. When he passed through the door, he stopped opposite the broom closet, and announced "One!" He then counted his way along the corridor, and quickly faded from hearing.

There was a few seconds of silence, before Norm said, "Is he always that mad?"

"You...er, get used to it," Rory replied.

Grace had walked over to Jake, who had been sitting in one of the steel tanning beds. With it open, both Rory and Amy could see that describing it as a "tanning bed" would be like describing a Swiss watch as "a few gears." As she closed it, something in the distance went clank, and the console in the centre of the room beeped a few times.

As she walked over to another tanning bed, Grace froze in mid-stride.

"...Forty years _from now..._," she re-wound. "How, exactly...?"

"We're time-travellers," said Amy.

"And I was just about to believe he actually _was_ Vishnu's next avatar," Grace sighed, "Norm, could you plug in and make sure Jake doesn't hurt himself?"

Norm started walking across the room, on a path that took him across the central console. One step, two, three, _thump_, as he walked into a police box that had not been there a split-second before.

"What," said everyone.

The door creaked open, and the Doctor's young, enthusiastic face leaned out. He said, "I used the boring-ers!" before stepping out into the room proper.

"You're blue!" said Amy.

"You've still got the bowtie..." said Norm.

"Bowties are cool," cut in Amy, before clapping her hand over her mouth when she realised what she had said.

"You've got a tail," said Rory. There was a muffled clang behind the window. The airlock at the far side of the room was shut, and one of the gurneys was conspicuously empty.

"You... just..." Grace spluttered, waving a pointing finger between the Doctor and the TARDIS.

"In order: tails are cool, I think Jake agrees with me, and I'm sorry for not explaining before," The Doctor said, smiling, "I'm a mad man with a box."


	2. Timey Wimey

"Doctor! "

The Doctor turned, one foot inside the TARDIS, the other still in the forest mud. A Na'vi was running toward him, taking yard-long strides across the forest floor. He could have easily been the subject of a photograph from _National Geographic_, if he hadn't been wearing a pristine white labcoat over his lanky blue body.

The Doctor realized he recognized him. "You're Jake, aren't you?

"Not quite," he replied, crouching down to match the Doctor's height. "You've not got an avatar yet, have you?

"No, just getting it, but-"

"This is yours," he said, pulling out a sonic screwdriver and giving it to the Doctor. "Don't use it until you know where it comes from, the _second_ time around and don't look at the contents, again 'till you know where it comes from, oh and Doctor", he paused, and inhaled, "thank you."

"For what? What's on this?" the Doctor said.

"Remember what happened the last time you gave someone your screwdriver. Will happen. You know what I mean."

The Doctor remembered, but only looked at the alien, shocked.

"What happens the second time?"

"Spoilers," the scientist said, before running off.

—

Grace weaved through the crowd of workers before arriving near a young man in a white shirt, who was playing mini-golf into a mug.

"Parker, we need to talk," she said.

"Hello, Grace," he replied without taking his eyes off the golf. "Go on, talk."

"You know what's out there, don't you?"

Parker didn't respond for a few seconds, and instead concentrated on putting his golf ball. As he hit the ball, Grace kicked the mug over. "Oops", she said as Parker glared at her.

"We've been through this," he said.

"And they're still out there, getting stepped on, or run over, or shot, or..."

"Come with me," he said, frustrated, weaving his way through the busy control room to a door on the far side.

"Do you even know what's out there?" Grace said, as he unlocked the door into his office.

"I don't ca―"

"Hello, Mr. Selfridge!" said the Doctor from leather chair on the far side of the room. For almost a full second Selfridge looked at the Doctor, dumbfounded, before glancing at the door he had just opened.

"That door was locked..."

"Well, yees, but I've never let a door stop me finding something interesting, and this place is pretty cutting edge for being built in the 2140s, it's even got the synthetic leather, and I'm sorry for being so rude, would you like a jelly baby?" the Doctor said, offering a brown paper bag. It didn't seem to come from anywhere; it was merely not there one moment and being unfolded in the next.

Grace causally took one and chewed it while Selfridge just stammered "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," said he.

"These are nice," said Grace, "when did you say they came from?"

"1958, straight from the factory."

"I... you're mad! Both of you!"

"We've been through that too," Grace replied caustically. "Besides, he knows."

"What?" said Selfridge, rapidly losing track of the conversation.

"I'm the mad man with a box," the Doctor said, smiling innocently.

There was a pause, before Selfridge said, trying to stay calm, "What do you want?"

"Just wondering what all the arm-wavy stomping military set-up's about, since you'd be pretty mad to be using this place as an actual garrison, unless... no, that doesn't appear for another century at least..."

"We're mining unobtanium," Selfridge hesitantly explained. Suddenly, the Doctor reached into his pocket, with a vague, "What...?" He kept searching for a moment, before burying his entire forearm into a pocket no more than two inches across. "This stuff?" he said, pulling out a silver rock clearly larger than the pocket he had just taken it from.

"That...stuff..." Selfridge squeaked. "...How?"

"Why would you be mining it? I mean, you can synthesize it out of mud, water and..." he stopped suddenly. "You can't synthesize it, can you? That's the next decade, isn't it? Sorry for confusing you, I'm not used to doing this kind of thing in the right ord-"

"_It's worth twenty million dollars a kilo!_ " said Selfridge, clinging to what he knew in the onslaught of absurdity.

"Oh," said the Doctor, suddenly deadly serious. "Why are these sorts of things never easy to fix?" he turned to Grace. "You never just here for science, are you? You-" Suddenly, the phone rang. Equally suddenly, it was by his ear and he began telling it, "Sorry, Mr. Selfridge isn't- Oh." There was an ominous pause. Selfridge and Grace exchanged glares. "Norm, can you say that again for Grace and Parker here?" the Doctor said, flicking a switch.

"Jake's cloned himself," Norm's voice said.

Selfridge and Grace looked away from each other. "I haven't touched him!" objected the Doctor.

—

Jake dug his toes into the dirt, and for a moment, stood there, drinking the new sensations that flooded him. A noise behind him made him turn, still revelling in the feeling of his tail swinging behind him and the dirt between his toes. He saw a bush nearby shake, before a figure suddenly leapt out of it, and rugby-tackled him to the ground. He looked up and found... himself in a lab coat and t-shirt.

"Having fun?" the stranger said, grinning.

"Who are you?" Jake replied.

Suddenly, the stranger looked worried, and glanced back to the bush. "Well, you know that the Doctor's a time-traveler, right?"

Jake raised his new eyebrow. "Right..."

"If you could change one thing in history, however minor, would what it be?"

...Nothing," Jake replied after some hesitation.

The stranger looked dejected. "Well, thanks," he said sarcastically, while he fished a wallet out of his coat and flipped it open.

"But— you— what?" said Jake.

"Just wait for the Doctor, OK? Sorry, I forgot this wasn't easy to follow."

The Doctor arrived a few minutes later, Grace following him. She was remarkably unfazed as he walked out into the forest with neither respirator or avatar, telling the concerned Norm, "He seems to know what he's doing."

As he approached the two, he said, "Right, I've met you, you're Jake, who are you?"

"Spoiler," not-Jake replied quickly.

The Doctor paused. "...How many times have you met me before now?"

"Once."

"Jake, been meaning to ask," the Doctor said, ignoring the tangent, "why are you here? Everyone else here is high-end biology or psych research and I heard you dissected a frog once."

"Brother was training for this, but he was killed for his wallet, so they pulled me in instead."

"Ah!" the Doctor said, suddenly delighted. "_When?_ Down to the day!"

"Er...6th May, 2148," said Jake, surprised at the question. He looked back at not-Jake, who winked at him.

The Doctor, ecstatic, started running back to the building. He didn't notice the two clones exchange smiles. "Amy! Rory! Back to the TARDIS! Let's get you fitted!"

Eventually, with its slow, metallic grinding, the TARDIS left the room.

The Doctor stepped out from the forest, tall and blue, and said, "Sorry about that. We ended up arriving ten minutes earlier than we left, and paradoxes aren't allowed. By the way, nice job with not letting on, Tom."

—

_2148_

Dr. Sullivan walked quickly through the dim street. He wasn't afraid, as such, but certainly had far better things to do than hang around in the streets, especially at this time of night. As he passed an ally-way, a young, bright, out-of-place voice said, "Thomas Sullivan?" He froze. "Yes?" he replied.

Someone detached themselves from the shadows of the alley, and sidled behind him. "I'm sorry about this, really, but it's important. I know it's difficult, but, please..."

The shock of cold metal suddenly ran through him, and he realized the stranger had just back-stabbed him. He felt his own blood, disturbingly warm and sticky, leak out of the wound and ooze around his back, and tried to say something and object. His lungs failed him, and he simply collapsed forward.

The stranger behind him hadn't moved from his position, only withdrawn the knife from Tom's rapidly failing body. Darkness seemed to creep around the edge of his vision, and as he slipped out of consciousness, the last thing he heard was a mechanical whirring sound by his ear.

He woke up surrounded by brass and cogwheels and mechanisms. He realized that there was a young man, in a suit and bowtie, standing beside him. He groaned in drowsiness, and the man spun around and crouched down beside him. "Oh, good, that would've gone horribly if you didn't wake up..."

With the efficiency of a bullet through treacle, Tom Sullivan managed to process what had just happened to him. He recognized that voice.

"_You stabbed me!_ " he said, both in surprise and alarm. Second thoughts flashed through his brain, and he looked down towards his chest. It was blue, mottled with turquoise and white stripes. He simply stared at it. He knew exactly what it was, and still didn't believe it.

"Yes, but look what you got out of it," said the man in the bowtie. "By the way, this is yours," he continued, handing over a leather wallet. "As I said, it's important. Trust me, I'm the Doctor."


	3. Gaia Is Not Nice

_(Author's note: Since this is slightly confusing, I should clarify the scene: the Doctor and Tom Sully have just stepped out of the TARDIS, after Tom was "rescued" in Chapter 2, and are standing beside Jake. All three of them are using avatars. Grace has just entered her avatar, and is interested in what the three of them are talking about.)_

A mildly confused Grace approached the three blue men."Should I ask?" she said cautiously.

"Yes, actually," replied the Doctor, with his omnipresent enthusiasm. "I promise it'll make sense."

"Go on, then."

"This is Tom, who I murdered half an hour and/or 6 years ago, before giving him a new body and bringing him here."

"You...!" started Jake, understandably angry.

"Hang on, I'm still talking!" the Doctor stopped him. "I only did that because you were here earlier to tell me that you're here because your brother got murdered just before the mission launched, and I thought that that was unfair."

"But that means..." Tom thought aloud.

"Yes, that means I only killed you because Jake was here to tell me you were killed," said the Doctor.

There was a moment's silence while this sank in.

"Do you do this sort of thing a lot?" Grace asked nonchalantly.

"Well, there was a time when I got stuck in the best prison in the uni―"

"Wow," said a new voice.

The four of them turned to see a blue Amy walking slightly unsteadily towards them. "So this guy is this guy's brother," she said, "and you... what? I had this the first time."

"Remember when you broke me out of the Pandorica? Actually, no you won't, that was Rory, he'll explain later, or he'll probably ask me to do it, actually..." the Doctor trailed off.

"Timey-wimey?" she prompted.

"Yes, timey-wimey," the Doctor agreed, before Grace gently but firmly pulled him away with a stern, "We need to talk."

Amy started to follow them, but she was stopped when she heard a quiet purring sound from Jake. Before she could react, Tom had gently hit him across the ear, with a joking "you're out of practice," before affectionately laying his arm across his shoulder.

She suddenly realized what Jake had meant, and replied with a casual, "Not too bad yourself."

The Doctor quickly spun around on one foot, saying, "She's married," before continuing around in a full circle to distract Grace from considering what he'd just said.

"You could've fooled me," said Jake, trying to hide his disappointment. "Where is he?"

"Who?" a taller, blu-er Rory said, managing to materialize behind Amy.

"No-one," she said hurriedly.

He raised an eyebrow suspiciously, while Amy did her best look offended at his doubt. Tom rolled his eyes at Jake, who looked away sheepishly.

Shortly, the doctors turned back to the group. "We have a plan," Grace announced.

"Oh good," Rory and Tom said simultaneously, before exchanging raised eyebrows.

"'scuse me, am I interrupting?" Norm said as he approached them, carrying a basketball in his long, skinny arms. Everyone turned to look at him, and he withered under the combined attention. "...Sorry."

"Jake," Grace continued, "you're coming with Norm and I, since we still have field tests to run, and we need a gun. Tom, you're going with the Doctor, Amy and Rory to... well, he keeps telling me, 'spoilers.' Also, I want the Sullys out of Quaritch's sight, since we'll have more leverage if he doesn't realize there's two of you running around. Everyone OK with that?"

Unanimous agreement.

"Sorry, Norm, what did you want?"

"Only Max was wondering if anyone wanted to play basketball, since we're all standing around here," he said.

"Basketball is cool," replied the Doctor, easily withstanding Rory and Amy's experienced, tired glare.

―

Some time later, Rory, Amy and the Doctor, all now Time Lord lookalikes again, met up with Tom just outside the base perimeter, to wait for the Doctor's surprise.

As Tom approached, he noticed their headgear. Or rather, lack of headgear. "You're not wearing resp... How?" he said.

Rory cut in before the Doctor could say anything with, "He's got a magic wand."

"I do _not _a magic wand!" was the indignant comeback.

Although he physically towered over them, Tom realized he was slightly scared of the Doctor, and didn't want to get involved. He stopped walking and crouched to match their height.

"What's the difference, then?" Rory replied.

The quiet before a fireworks display.

"...'Magic wand' sounds silly," the Doctor said coldly.

Tom only mumbled, "I'm sorry I asked."

"Doctor, that's not the surprise, is it?" Amy asked, looking skywards. Everyone followed her gaze.

"No, it's our ride," he replied more warmly, as a gunship came into view above them.

As the gunship landed, the Doctor casually sauntered up to the cockpit window. "Room for―" he glanced over to Tom, who had stood back up,"―six?" he ventured jokingly.

"You'll be the Doctor, then?" the pilot asked.

"Absolutely, and would you like a jelly baby?" he said, the brown paper bag materializing again.

She gingerly took one. "I'm Trudy. Augustine tells me you're going up to the ― what?" she said, as the Doctor raised a finger to his lips.

"Amy and Rory don't know," he whispered conspiratorially.

Trudy leaned out the window to look at the group. "Sorry, you'll have to introduce me."

"That's Rory, with Amy, and―"

"I know him―"

"―Not Jake," Tom finished.

"..._Not_ Jake?"

"It's complicated," the Doctor didn't explain.

Trudy paused, unsure of what to say. The Doctor was quite clearly mad, but Grace had warned her about that, and everyone else with him seemed sensible... mostly. "Right. Get in," she said after a moment.

There were, in fact, six seats in the cockpit. This didn't help, but they set off anyway.

"It's cold out here," Tom moaned from behind the cockpit door after a while.

"And it's about to get colder, we're just passing the cloud layer. Sorry," said Trudy.

"I've never seen clouds from the inside before," said the Doctor, matter-of-factly. His companions just looked at him, then each other.

"You ain't seen nothing till you've seen clouds from the inside?" suggested Amy.

"Nope, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen the Hallelujah mountains at night," Trudy replied.

"Why are they called the...?" Rory trailed off.

"Wait a sec, you'll see," she didn't explain.

There were two sharp gasps as they broke through the clouds and saw them from above: a dark, immaterial, almost divine ocean, stretching out forever in all directions. Amid this ocean stood great majestic monoliths of rock, drifting slowly through the clouds, the ships of some giant race who were inexplicably terrible at masonry. Draped across these towers were dresses of glowing ferns and trees, turning the misshapen ships into enormous shifting lighthouses in a featureless, infinite sea. The nearest mountain quite easily dwarfed the gunship hundreds of times over, and shone with the luminosity of a city.

Amy and Rory just stared, while the Doctor grinned from ear to ear.

A noise came from behind the cockpit door, and the Doctor dropped his grin. "Yeah?"

"I've got the best view!" Tom taunted.

Exactly 30 seconds later, the door burst open, and the Doctor, Amy and Rory spilled out into the main hold to find Tom dangling his feet out of the open door.

"Whoa," the couple gasped in unison, having discarded the cockpit's grimy window.

"What, you've never seen this before?"

"Nope," replied Rory, still dumbfounded. He didn't even turn to make eye contact, only gazed out onto the infinite sea.

Tom turned to the Doctor, mock-scathing "How could you, Doctor? Not showing your loyal companions the Hallelujah mountains?"

"We just came from Barcelona!"

"...I've been to Barcelona," said Tom, underwhelmed.

"The _planet _―"

"Is that a waterfall?" Rory intervened.

There was a craning of heads.

"You can't have a waterfall from a flying mountain," Amy said, confused. "Where's it coming from?"

Everyone turned sideways to the Doctor.

"I don't know!" he said.

"Do you want to find out?" Trudy called.

"Yes please," said almost everyone at once.

As the aircraft slowly changed direction, Tom slid the door closed, and the three humans – or human lookalikes – scurried back into the cockpit. They were in for another surprise.

"It's stopped," Rory said.

"What." the Doctor concurred.

They leaned forward slightly, and watched the tail of the waterfall disappear beneath the clouds. Then, it was gone, and the mountainside looked as though the mysterious river had never been there.

As they got closer to the rock, Tom became agitated. "Doctor...?"

"Hmm?" the Doctor replied.

"Can you hear that?" Tom said.

"Hear what?" Amy asked.

"They're... sort of―" He got interrupted by the thump of landing. "voices, except it's like there's a wall in the way..."

The Doctor was already sliding the door open and getting out of the gunship. As he stepped out, he looked around and said enigmatically, "Oh, good."

"Good?" asked Amy, as she followed him.

" Good, Flesh Na'vi are just as good at telepathy as the real deal are, and it seems that telepathy runs in the Sully family, and good because something wants to talk to us, but _bad_, because I don't have the hardware to talk back." As he spoke, the Doctor paced around the area randomly, following paths that existed only for him, before suddenly spinning on the spot to look Tom in the eye.

"Telepathy?" was his confused response.

"Well, yes, comes with your brain having its own aerial. The trees just want to say hello," the Doctor said, smiling.

" The trees _what?"_asked Rory.

"Sorry, I thought I explained this. All of the trees on Pandora are connected into a gigantic network that spans pretty much the whole moon ― well, did, anyway, also transmits very low-amplitude BQ field which lets most of the native life... talk to the trees. It's nothing like that really, but you don't know about Berekov―"

"So what do you want me to do?" Tom gently interrupted, slowly getting used to the Doctor's rambling.

"Well, the sonic screwdriver―"

"—magic wand―" whispered Rory.

"—can amplify BQ wave manifold and produce a greater resonance... Hang on, no. It can give you a better signal, if you imagine for a moment that telepathy works like a TV. It's not anything like that though I..."

"So... switch it on?" Tom said.

"Sorry, only works at short range. I'd have to put it up your―" the Doctor gestured.

"Wait, what? I'm not putting something that long up my―"

"Nono, in your braid, not... down there."

"Oh, right. Yes, duh. Er... It's not going to hurt, is it?" Tom asked.

"No. Just, kneel down, there's a good kitty― oops, shouldn't have said that..." the Doctor caught himself.

Since Tom's eyes were now almost level with the Doctor's, he glared at him, but the Doctor didn't flinch, and just held the screwdriver near the end of Tom's queue. As the snaking tendrils caught it, he flicked a switch, and the green light continued even as his hand moved away.

"Oh, wow. Doctor, I can hear them, I can hear the voi-ARRRRGH!" screamed Tom, as he toppled sideways. Suddenly, he twisted himself around and tried to leap at the Doctor, but it was as though the two sides of his body refused to cooperate, and he missed and veered wildly off to the side. He started to recover as the Doctor started to run out of leaping range.

"Doctor? What just happened?" asked Amy.

"Rory, I―" tried the Doctor, before having to tumble out the path of Tom's disorganized charge.

"_Doctor!_" snarled Tom, in a voice quite unlike his own.

"Rory, grab the screwdriver!" yelled the Doctor. Tom was getting more organized now, and more in control of his body. At least, something was more in control of the body, and the Doctor was finding dodging the assaults more and more difficult.

"Are you mad?" screamed Rory.

"_We want..._ – no, st―! _w-want_..."

"YES!"

Tom had collapsed again, but this time, the Doctor realised, he was between him and his companions. Tom ― or the thing occupying Tom's body ― realized it too, and started running in the wrong direction, away from the Doctor. A split-second later, Amy and Rory realised it, and started running themselves, but Tom had the advantage of being three feet taller.

" ..._con-control. Humans unwanted. Humans chaot―_, please_― c-cha-oo-tic._"

"Doctor, a little help?" asked Rory, visibly panicking.

"Help me get the magic wand back!" shouted the Doctor, running towards the three of them.


	4. Class Three

Rory was trying to resist looking behind him for somewhere to run. Tom was worse than the Silence, in a way. You _forgot_ the Silence. You didn't forget the ten foot tall alien threatening you with a dead, vacant expression on his face, like he didn't know how to control its own body. Or didn't care.

He ― it ― kept looking between him and Amy, looking for one of them to jump and try and run away. Rory looked past him and saw the Doctor some distance away, also not daring to move. Tom kept looking between them, ears flickering oddly.

The Doctor stepped forward onto a twig, which snapped. Tom reacted and Rory jumped back to avoid a leap that never came. He cursed under his breath when he realised the leap had been in the other direction. The two rolled on the ground for a moment, but, too quick for either Rory or the Doctor to get to them, Tom got back up with Amy's jaw gripped in one hand, it's arm across her neck.

"_Doctor, we w-want..._" it tried to say, in its distant, truly alien voice.

"I know," the Doctor interrupted, slowly stepping forward. He was smiling, and Tom wisely stood up slightly, lifting Amy with him, still by the jaw.

"_We... kill her, if... you try an-anything," _it said.

"Rory," the Doctor said, calm as ever. "My magic wand, please?"

Without knowing quite sure why he was doing it, Rory ran towards Tom's back, and the sonic screwdriver dangling from his braid. Tom knew he was coming, and hid it's weak spot, spinning around to face Rory, putting Amy between them.

It only had a split-second to realize the catch as the Doctor ran up to him and caught the dangling sonic screwdriver as it swung past him on its wide arc. As he pulled, the tendrils wrapped around it gave away, and Tom collapsed, flinging Amy away on the momentum of their spin.

Rory realised that he and Amy were breathing heavily, coming down from an adrenaline surge. They stumbled over to each other, away from the fallen alien.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was approaching it, screwdriver poised. Tom lay face down in the grass, still apart from his shallow, erratic breathing. Suddenly, a long spindly arm shot out and gripped the Doctor's wrist tightly.

"Good," the Doctor said, enigmatically.

"G-good?"

"Good, you're shaking," he continued, in a voice that could tap-dance on eggshells. "Welcome back. You want me to put this away, don't you?" A twitch. The Doctor passed his screwdriver to his other hand, before sliding it into his jacket. "It's gone now. Can I have my hand back, please?" The blue arm feel back to Tom's side. "Thanks."

The sound changed slightly, and included another, higher sound. The Doctor suddenly realised that Tom was crying, sobbing into the dry grass. The Doctor slid an arm under him and lifted him up slightly, before he choked through the tears, "D-doctor, don't e-ever do that again. Please_._"

The two of them shifted, and the Doctor ended up looking into Tom's huge, yellow eyes. There had been an enthusiasm, a driving fire, in them earlier, when he had bounded out of the TARDIS with a new body into a new world. It was gone now. The only thing left was a shell of a mind, only staying together because nothing was pushing it apart. The Doctor's own enthusiasm and boyishness seemed to shrivel up in that look, just leaving a goodbye note of things that needed to be done. The Doctor dropped all the enigma and all the suggestion of having a plan to fix everything, and just said, "We're getting you home." He tried to pull Tom upright. "Sorry, you'll have to stand up."

He stood up, and the four of them clambered back into Trudy's gunship.

—

The Doctor, Rory and Trudy sat in the ship's cockpit. Rory and Trudy just looked at each other, concerned, while the Doctor held his head in his hands and muttered under his breath. "Stupid, stupid, stupid..."

"Doctor, what happened back there?" asked Rory, somewhat apprehensively.

He turned sharply to look at Rory, as though he was about to yell at him, but suddenly he withered and said calmly and quietly, "I forgot about class 3."

"Class 3?" Rory prompted.

The Doctor wound up for another of his rambling explanations, but he seemed tired, almost reluctant. "Stross alien class 1 is humanoids, and stuff that generally thinks like a human. Or a Time Lord, anyway. You, them, Cybermen, Daleks... well, mostly Daleks... Anyway, Class 2 is the people who're just a little... _off_ if you don't look at it from their point of view, like the Silence, and the Angels, and the Nerada, no, hang on, you've not met the Nerada... Nevermind. Class 3..." He exhaled and leaned back in his seat. Rory leaned toward him imperceptibly, waiting for the rest. "Class 3 are _rare_ to start with. You don't usually think about them, cause you hardly ever need to. But you don't really want to either, because you get creeped out. Class 3 can completely out-think humans. Think in circles around you, and then tie you up in a rope you didn't even realise they were holding. They could sometimes beat the Time Lords, if we had a bad day, just sometimes."

"But you didn't fight fair all the time, surely?" asked Trudy, apparently ignoring the deluge of references. The Doctor smiled at her enthusiasm.

"That wasn't fighting fair. That was pulling every trick in the book, even when we had to grab future copies of the book for new tricks, and it only just worked. But then it just vanished. The only class 3 species we'd ever encountered just vanished. Nobody else knew anything about them, like they never existed. Now I'm thinking they probably wound up here."

"So what happened to Tom?" Rory asked.

The Doctor started whispering so he couldn't be heard through the bulkhead. "I think he was attacked by a whatever-it-is. The trees form a giant computer network, but that's so abstract that it probably didn't know enough... reality to work out that I could grab the screwdriver that easily."

"But then how did it stand up? And attack us?"

"...Tom knows reality."

"It went through...?" Rory thought aloud.

"Rory, you're a nurse. I imagine you've seen an operation?"

"Yes?" Rory said apprehensively. He saw where this was going, and didn't like it.

"It's a mind instead of a body, and the surgeon's a scrap merchant, not a healer," the Doctor said solemnly. Rory twisted in his seat to glance behind him, apparently through the cockpit doors.

While they discussed this, Amy had been comforting a shivering Tom in the main cargo bay. He had broke down crying again when they had taken off, but she had just patiently stroked his head. He had calmed down eventually.

"Thank you," he said. And then in a flash of self-consciousness, "This must be really weird for you."

"Not really," Amy said without thinking, before realising how ridiculous that sounded. "Er... I guess it is. You just get used to it, travelling with the Doctor."

Tom lay there, his head resting on Amy's lap, for what felt like a very long time. "...I suppose you must," he said. "Not sure I want to, though."

"He's nice, really, when you get to know him," Amy said, not entirely sure why she felt compelled to defend the Doctor.

"I'm sure he is," Tom said, smiling faintly. "But if you'd told me yest― but it wouldn't be yesterday, would it? It'd be umpteen years ago that you'd have to tell me that an alien would drop out of the sky in his police box, kill me and then turn me into another alien entirely. And I'd just laugh at you. I'm not sure I'd want to hang around him long enough for that to be normal."

Amy considered this for quite a long time before she replied, "We usually leave after a couple of days."

"Then it's off to another time and another place, while the rest of us dream and pick up the pieces?"

She could feel the tears welling up, even though she hadn't realised it until now. "Yeah," she choked.

"I'm not sure I could bear that," Tom said, smile gone. "I don't think I could handle weirdness after weirdness without sitting down and working it all through. But obviously you can, and Rory can, so I guess Rory's a really lucky guy."

"We're married," Amy pointed out, smiling.

Tom smiled back. "I know. Did I say congratulations?"

Amy started laughing now. "I thought you meant―"

"No, not like that. Jake's always been the cruiser. 'I'm an anthropologist' doesn't have quite the same street cred as 'I'm a marine,' it turns out."

"Maybe you should've gone into brain surgery?" Amy suggested.

He laughed, before saying, "Maybe I should've. Do you think the Doctor would let me?"

"No messing with the Laws of Time!" the Doctor called through the door.

"You brought me back!" Tom called back.

No response.

"He's left off the 'except when I care,'" Amy whispered conspirationally. Tom laughed again.

"It was a bad idea anyway. Couldn't do surgery, I'd just be creeped out with everything... laid out... like that..." he trailed off, as his smile faded.

Amy's hand went up to his cheek again, and Tom's attention snapped back to her as she touched him. "You're safe, you're in one piece, nobody's going to hurt you, OK?"

Tom raised his own hand to meet hers. "OK," he said, more forlornly, as the cockpit door hissed open. Rory came through, and realised something was wrong.

"Got some bad news. Do you want me to tell you now, or when we get back?"

"Later," Amy said. She turned to Tom, "That OK?" He nodded.

—

Later, as everyone disembarked, the Doctor scurried through the lab until he found Grace.

"What do you mean, you've lost Jake?" he asked, flabbergasted.


	5. Meeting the Omatikaya

"How can you have lost him?" Rory asked.

"We met up with a thanator, he ran in the wrong direction," Grace explained as she rushed around the lab.

"Thanator?" Amy asked.

"Think a rhino with everything turned up to eleven," the Doctor quipped.

"Except don't because that's not how it works?" Rory prompted.

"Oh no, that's exactly how it works," Grace said, before her brain caught up with her ears. "How do _you_ know that?" she asked the Doctor.

"Met one when I was about 600, had a spot of tea, that kind of thing. Danced."

"You...?" Grace startled.

"Anyway, about Jake?" the Doctor continued, completely nonchalantly.

Grace stopped rushing around, and half-collapsed in frustration. "Well, we don't know where he is. I suppose it's too much to hope that your magic box can find him?"

"Sorry, I have to know where I'm going. Or it does, anyway."

"How can you have lost him?" Rory asked again.

"Becau— wait, what?" Grace said.

"I mean, how can you get stuff from his avatar to him without also knowing where his avatar is?"

Norm, Grace and the Doctor stopped, and exchanged looks. Norm gaped slightly, then closed his mouth and rolled his eyes. The Doctor just shrugged.

"Thank you, Rory," Grace said, far more sincerely than she had been previously.

Ten minutes later, Rory, Grace and the Doctor were standing next to a Frankenstein contraption built out of a satellite dish, 31 bent paperclips, a coat hanger, 1.25 rolls of duct tape, and Norm's lunchbox. Amy and Norm, meanwhile, had produced a map and were slowly plotting on it. Eventually, they reached a conclusion.

"That's not good," Norm said, as he checked the results.

"Where is he?" asked Grace.

"Here-ish," said Amy, gesturing.

"Oh," Grace stated.

"Oh?" Rory asked.

"He's heading towards the Omaticaya's home. Remember what I said about the goons upstairs shooting the natives?"

"Oh. Ah. But he can't die in an Avatar, can he?"

"Well, no, but the thing costs about 5 billion dollars, so we wouldn't hear the end of it if something happened," Grace said.

"Is there a problem with us getting him back, though?" asked the Doctor.

"I al— ...What do you mean by 'us'?" Grace asked suspiciously.

—

Jake didn't know what was going on, though he was desperately trying to look like he did. He'd been led out of the forest, by a young woman who kept admonishing him for something he didn't understand. Now he was in front of what looked to be the entire tribe, and they didn't seem to like what they saw. The woman's mother and father were apparently deciding whether or not to kill him, and he felt like a frog in a high school biology class.

"Why did you come to us?" she asked, in oddly accented English.

"I came to learn," he said, since it was the first thing that came to mind. It was technically true, but probably wasn't going to save him if something went wrong.

"We have tried to teach other Sky People," she replied vaguely. "It is hard to fill a cup which is already full."

"My cup is empty," Jake said, before his brain could interrupt. He got no reaction, so he tried to continue. "Trust me. Just ask Dr. Augustine. I'm no scientist."

Suddenly, she became more interested. "What are you?"

"I was a marine," Jake said, before he realised that that wouldn't make sense. "A... a warrior, of the... Jarhead clan," he stumbled. _Jarhead clan? What am I thinking? Too late now, I guess._

Suddenly, a taller man standing beside him shouted something in the native language, but the father shouted him down. He then said something to the older woman, who then spoke to the younger woman Jake had met originally, who objected. Jake himself couldn't follow any of the conversation, so he was immensely relieved when the older woman spoke in English.

"It is decided. My daughter will teach you our ways. Learn well, Jakesully. Then we will see if your insanity can b—"

"Ground control to Major Sully!" shouted another, more familiar male voice from behind the crowd of people. It took a moment for Jake to recognize it, but when he did, he felt very annoyed: there was nowhere to hide. _They already think we're insane, what are they going to think of _him?

And, a moment later, _he_ appeared, neatly and effortlessly dodging people trying to stand in his way. "Sorry, no, that's someone else," he said as he approached the four of them. "and excuse me, Mo'at..." He leaned over and whispered something in her ear, but the only thing Jake could tell from her response was that it was surprising.

"I know, major failing, really," the Doctor said, before continuing, "and I've forgotten to mention how bea...ti...fu... Neytiri, how old are you?"

He was referring to the woman who had met Jake originally, and Jake made a mental note of the name. She just stared for a moment, before replying, slightly affronted, "Mevosìng."

"_Oh,_" the Doctor said, "sorry about that. Just to clear things up, you don't know me yet, and even if you did, next time I come around around I've swapped faces so you won't recognize me anyway. I'm the Doctor, and I'm wearing three layers and a bowtie in the middle of a tropical forest and I don't care one —"

"Sky people are not allowed near Hometree," said a stocky man from behind the Doctor, in slightly broken English.

"Talk to the hand," he replied, raising said hand. Jake noticed there was something odd about the fingers, and counted: index, middle, ring, _extra_, pinky. He checked by wiggling his own fingers and got the standard four. Then he noticed that it was not really a standard: natural Na'vi only had three.

"I'm not human," the Doctor said after a moment, "and it's important to remember that because I wouldn't want you to lump me in with them; they're far more sensible. Usually. Anyway, I see you're suffering from a severe case of human colonialism, and I know how to deal with that, but I won't next time you meet not-me so don't bother asking, and I'm rambling again and I can see you're getting very very annoyed, Tsu'tey, it's Tsu'tey isn't it? Anyway, you should let me near Hometree because I know who and when the next Toruk Makto is."

He let the resulting gasp and gossip subside slightly before he continued.

"More importantly, you should let me _and my friends,"_ he said, as Rory and Amy managed to emerge into the circle that was forming around the Doctor. "because—"

"_They_ are sky people," the Doctor heard Eytukan say.

"They're with me," the Doctor said, slightly more coldly.

"And why should we trust you?" the man called Tsu'tey said from behind, as he drew a weapon.

"Oh, do we really need to go there?" the Doctor asked. He got no response from Tsu'tey, only a worried "Are you sure about this...?" from Amy.

"Yes, I'm sure. I'm always sure," he said nonchalantly, before reaching deep into his jacket and pulling out a... hatstand, and pointing it, base-first, at Tsu'tey. Despite everyone and everything, Jake tried very hard, and only barely succeeded, to keep himself from laughing.

Tsu'tey, never having encountered a mahogany hatstand with "Smith & Sons, 1903" engraved on the base, was just confused. He stood his ground for a moment, before slowly putting his weapon away.

"Didn't think so," said the Doctor, putting away the hatstand into a space obviously too small to contain it. "You should trust me because the humans aren't new to this invading-the-natives-from-space idea, but until now they've always, always been on the receiving end, and I bet you're wondering how they managed to survive all of that. Simple. They came to me. Or I came to them, it's rather hard to tell, sometimes, especially after the mess with Craig... _Any_way, listen to me because I've been here 10 years from now 300 years ago, and everything's worked out fine. Mostly."

—

"Where is he?" Grace asked, as the three of them came back, the Doctor casually leading the way.

"He's fine," he said offhandedly. She couldn't say anything else before he had walked straight past her.

Rory interrupted her before she tried following the Doctor, "He's with the... Omanitican?"

"Nice try," she replied, "...what?" as she realised what that implied.

"Neytiri's teaching him how they do their stuff 'round these parts," the Doctor said in a Southern drawl. He'd picked up a doodad in the lab, and was examining it intently, as though he'd never seen it before. He put it down before saying in his normal voice, "Don't ever let me do that voice again."

Grace looked between them, speechless. Norm, who'd done the same thing, recovered faster. "What the hell did you say to them?" he said.

"Not a lot, really. They'd have probably done it anyway if I wasn't there," the Doctor replied nonchalantly.

"You pulled out a—!" interrupted Amy.

The Doctor quickly held a finger to his lips, and hissed, "Shhh!"

"...Shh?" she asked.

"Shhh."

"Why?" Amy said, annoyance rising in her voice.

"Well, they'll never believe it from us. I was going to let Jake tell them," the Doctor said.

"Tell us what?" asked Grace and Norm simultaneously.

"Honestly, you should ask Jake. He'll be asleep in half an hour. Awake. You know what I mean."

"No...?" Rory wavered, before he and Amy turned to Grace.

"The avatar disconnects if it falls asleep," she explained. "Half an hour. Fine. I probably won't believe it even when he tells me, though."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," said the Doctor.

—

An hour later, Jake woke up and explained everything. Having heard his explanation, Grace asked for the Doctor over the intercom. A few seconds later, the Doctor poked his head around the door.

"OK, what—" Grace began, before noticing something. "What's the kettle for?"

"Making tea," replied the Doctor, faux-affronted. "What does it look like?"

The three humans looked at each other. "Something nastier?" Jake suggested.

The Doctor stepped fully into the room, before unwrapping the kettle cord from his neck and putting the ensemble on a nearby table. "No more kettle. Anything else?" he said.

"The hatstand, maybe?" Grace suggested.

"What about it?"

"_What about it?"_ Grace almost yelled. "How did you pull a 6ft hatstand out of nowhere?"

"I mean," Norm said, more timidly, "you're not Mary Poppins."

"Of course I'm not. Where do you think she got her bag?"

"What—"

"You—"

"Maybe I should have told... Netiry '?'" Jake asked Grace. She just glared at him.

The Doctor seemed to have a brainwave. "Mary Poppins is still around in the 22nd century? Oh, wazzat..." he said, wondering to a nearby window and looking out.

"There was a remake in 2150..." Norm trailed off. "What?"

The Doctor turned back to the group. "Sorry, nevermind. Yes, not Mary Poppins, and yes, hatstands. Hatstands are cool. Anything else?"

Grace looked around, and Jake caught the look of slightly confused desperation on her face. "No," she concluded, frustrated.

"OK, then," the Doctor said, picking up the kettle again. "Would anyone like some tea? No? Goodbye, then."

He closed the door behind him, and Grace tried to block out the "Um diddle diddle um diddle ay"s the proceeded down the corridor before they drove her completely mad. However, she wasn't worried about being driven slightly mad. As far as she could tell, she already was.


	6. Miles Quaritch

_(Author's note: Sorry for taking so long. I keep getting distracted by life, writer's block, and procrastination. This chapter is slightly shorter because plot begins, and I didn't want to leave you waiting for it. It is here now, so read on!)_

_(__**Spoiler warning:**__ minor Wedding of River Song details will be mentioned here and later in the fic. They probably won't be spoilery without seeing the episode, though.)_

"Seriously, business as usual?" said Tom who was kneeling down at the table.

"Well, unless you've got a be-"began the Doctor, before the Doctor barged in through the door. Amy, Rory, Grace, Norm, Jake and Tom all stared, while the sitting Doctor managed to ask, "What's happened?"

"Err," the newly entered Doctor began. He covered his eyes, before moving his hand to check his watch. "Right, half an hour ago, um diddle diddle um diddle ay, right?"

"," his counterpart replied calmly.

"Good," the new Doctor said, smiling. "Ponds, you need to come with me, right now, there's too much of a timey-wimey mess around here. If you two get twisted into another time loop we might break the universe, so _come on_. …Again."

Amy and Rory had managed to disentangle themselves from the meeting table, before joining the Doctor, who headed out of the door. Just before he vanished, he nodded to the younger Doctor, who was still calmly watching them. "Spoilers," the elder replied to the younger, who nodded. With that, the Doctor and the Ponds left, closing the door behind them.

The four still gathered around the table exchanged glances a few times. There seemed to be a very long time before anyone spoke. Eventually, Tom asked, flatly, "What was that?"

"I don't know, I'll figure it out eventually," said the Doctor, care-free. "And yes, business as usual."

There was another long, awkward pause.

"…But all the schedules are set up for _one_ Sullivan," Tom recovered.

"The schedules are set up for one _Doctor_ Sullivan," amended Grace.

Cogs in the back of Jake's brain ticked over, and he glared at Grace. Norm suggested, "She does have a point. You have Na'vi boot camp to worry about."

"Doesn't mean I ca-" Jake started, before being interrupted by a ding sound from the Doctor. "Oooh, space-wacey detector," muttered he, grinning. Tom looked at him, slightly concerned, before turning to Norm. He caught his eye, and got a shrug in response.

There was another ding sound, this time from a computer terminal. "You've got mail?" Norm said to Jake.

"…The hell?" Jake said, after reading his message.

"Wassit say?" said the Doctor.

"Turok Makto says hi," Jake quoted. "…Who's Turok Makto?"

"It's a title that hasn't been used for decades," Tom provided. "None of the Na'vi know how to type, do they?" he asked Grace.

It took a moment for Grace to respond, before she said, flatly, "No. Doctor?"

"What?"

"I don't know, apart from the fact that a lot of blatantly impossible things have happened recently and they've all been caused by you in some way or another. Considering your clone just walked into the room for reasons you yourself don't know yet, I think blaming you is a fairly sensible option."

"I know _a_ Toruk Makto, but it's probably not the one that sent that message, since I've only been here 30-odd years in the future."

"The last Toruk Makto lived the best part of 200 years ago," Norm interjected. "It's a really rare thing."

Suddenly, eight eyes were staring at the Doctor. "Even if I did know who it was, I couldn't tell you. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. Anyway, there wouldn't be any reason to teach him to type."

"What about the sender address?" Tom asked.

Pause. "Empty," Jake replied.

"…OK, I'll believe you," Grace said, still somewhat suspicious. "Now what?"

Nothing happened, but it felt as though it should have. Something was different, though nothing had changed.

"…Don't say things like that," said Tom, looking around suspiciously.

"Doctor?" asked Norm. The Doctor was sitting stock still gazing off into the middle distance. Suddenly, he vaulted out of his seat, frantically waving the sonic screwdriver around the room.

"Nonononono," he muttered before freezing suddenly, and consulting the screwdriver. Then, he made to grab an invisible hat he was wearing. "No!" he said, before running out the door and down the corridor.

They managed to catch up with him in the avatar lab, as he waved his screwdriver around the centre console. Tom noticed the room seemed more open than before, but it took until the Doctor leaned exasperatingly over the console for him to notice.

"Where's your box?" he and Jake realized simultaneously. The space in the middle of the room was completely empty; the police box had vanished.

"…divide by phi, squareroot, carry the one…" the Doctor muttered, before announcing, "3 months from now."

"What," stated Grace and Tom, after a moment's pause.

"Something's twisted the conjugated Heilheim matrix over this 5-space…" Amazingly, the Doctor's rambling withered in the face of Grace's impatient stare. "Someone pulled a time rug from under us," he started again. "and we got shifted around compared to the rest of the universe."

"And the box?" Norm piped in.

"The TARDIS was sitting outside the universe, so it's been shifted 3 months forwards from here."

"Oh no," Grace groaned.

"What, you want to time travel all of a sudden?" Jake snarked.

"No…" Grace replied monotonously. "We need to deal with _him_ for 3 months."

"Sorry," said the Doctor, quite clearly embarrassed. "I'm not good at this linear thing."

—

"Doctor _who_?"

"I don't know!" Selfridge protested. "He's just 'the Doctor!' Look, he told me himself he's a madman with a box. That's not a mark of sanity, is it?"

"I'd like to meet him. Can you do that for me, Parker?"

—

The Doctor opened the door confidently, and strode down the aisle in this room full of chairs. At the far end stood a tall, older man, in a flak jacket, hunched over a computer terminal.

"Hello, Colonel," said the Doctor, jovially. "How can I help?"

"I take you're the Doctor?" Quaritch said, turning around. The Doctor froze as Quaritch turned around, and the jovial atmosphere seemed to condense out of the room and fall to the floor in a lump.

"Yes," the Doctor responded woodenly.

"I hear you're with us for the next three months," Quaritch said.

"Yes, my time machine got towed off. If you don't mind me asking, what happened to your eye?"

"It got chewed up and spat out," Quaritch replied, before his mind changed gears. "Your…?"

"Yes, my time machine. You don't know me, do you?"

"Should I?"

"No, not really. Would you like a jelly baby?" the Doctor asked, trying to lighten the mood. Quaritch's eyepatch was creeping him out.


	7. Discontinuities

_Note: {Curley Brackets} is dialogue in Na'vi. I'm assuming you don't speak it (although kudos if you do) and writing it in English saves time for both of us._

The mud went _splurt_ as Jake landed in it again. His pa'li had run off with him again, and again he'd lost his balance.

He wasn't very good at this, he knew that and he knew Neytiri knew it. He stood up wearily, and tried to wipe the thickest mud off of his arms and legs.

However, as Neytiri approached him from halfway up the field, he heard a rustle in the bush, and turned to see a blue figure hiding in the undergrowth. He tried to withdraw when he realized Jake had seen him, but he pulled back awkwardly, and Jake realized that it was, in fact, an Avatar. However, the face had vanished too quickly for Jake to recognise who it was.

He realized he'd missed something Neytiri had said. "What?" he asked, for what could have been the hundredth time. Also for the hundredth time, Neytiri raised her hand, and Jake felt himself pre-emptively flinch backwards but forced himself forward again. She would only be angrier if he avoided her.

Her slap stung, more so than the previous ones, and Jake didn't need to be told twice how frustrating he was being. She opened her mouth, most likely to berate him or lament his inability to learn, when she stopped, and stared.

{What?} she said, after a moment.

Jake turned to see what had surprised her, and was confronted with Tom, who had swapped his lab coat for a thin - open, Jake noted, which was surprising for him - white shirt and shorts. Apart from the clothing, someone could have slipped a mirror between them - no wonder Neytiri was confused.

{Please don't ask} said Tom, {It's complicated}

{Who are you?} Neytiri asked. Jake didn't understand what she had said, but he saw her tense up as she asked the question.

{I'm Tom, Jake's identical twin} he answered, in fluent Na'vi, although he realized how thin an explanation that was as soon as he opened his mouth.

{What does that mean?} she asked, and her expression made it clear how skeptical she was.

{We...} Tom hesitated, as he came up with an answer for Neytiri, rather than Grace. {...have identical bodies.}

Neytiri tiled her head to the side a little. {Do you share a spirit?} she asked.

{...I don't know?} Tom answered uncertainly, turning to Jake, and then feeling stupid as he realized Jake hadn't understood a word he had said.

Jake knew Neytiri well enough to know what was coming. _Incomi_- he thought, but then realized that his expectations didn't match reality - the slapping sound he had heard wasn't Neytiri's hand connecting with Tom's cheek; it was his hand connecting with her wrist. They stood there for a moment, her hand hovering an inch from his face, before he spoke.

"Has it crossed your mind, even for a moment, that we could be right?" Tom said, in English. There was a cold anger in his voice, and it was so unexpected that Jake felt a chill down his back and across his tail. The Tom he knew - although only in passing - was nowhere near this assertive.

Neytiri pulled back her hand, and almost spat the words, "You know no-"

Tom didn't let her finish. "Do you want to die?" he said with the same iciness.

Neytiri looked at him, in a way that made Jake half-expect her to try to slap him again.

"No," she said, although reluctantly, as though she didn't want to admit the weakness.

"Then give us a chance," Tom replied, his voice returning to something resembling normal. "Some of us want to help you, and you're not making it easy for us."

"You don't See," Neytiri said, in a tone that almost became a growl.

"You've only tried teaching us once," Tom said, glancing at Jake. "And you didn't exactly pick the best candidate."

"Thanks for the recommendation," Jake said icily, flattening his ears backwards.

"Lean further forward," Tom told him, before turning back to Neytiri. "Besides, you don't See sky people."

There was a dread silence for a moment, and Tom feared he'd offended her. Instead, she said, "What do you want?"

"To help you. Cooperate with us, so nobody has to die. You won't have to leave anything, but you'll need to help us for us to help you."

This was news to Jake. He had been certain the situation was going to come to blows. "What?" he and Neytiri said simultaneously. They exchanged glances as Tom explained the masterstroke.

"Because we have the Doctor," Tom said, with a grin.

"There's nothing here, Doctor…" said Trudy over the radio, on her transition from mild amusement to boredom. They had just landed on one of the flying mountains, and Trudy still wasn't sure exactly what the Doctor was looking for.

"Of course there is! Mountains don't float!" he shouted back from some distance away, as he paced across the grassy plateau. He held the sonic screwdriver out in front of him like a dowsing rod, before muttering, "…apart from on Ragesh III, I suppose, but they were playing Cat's Cradle with their Ricci tensor…"

He stopped suddenly, screwdriver still whirring in the air, and called back, "Trudy, your thing has a gyroscope, doesn't it?" She replied that it did.

Suddenly, the Doctor started running back towards the Sampson. "What does it say?" he continued.

"It's got fried by the flux vortex," Trudy replied, confused at the suddenly enthusiasm.

"Ask anyway," the Doctor pressed. "Which way is down?"

She did. "Apparently, 'down' is that way," she said, pointing into the mountain.

"_Aha!_" the Doctor said, and sprinted across the grass again, screwdriver leading. This time, Trudy clambered out of the Samson and tried to keep up with him.

After a moment of running, they came up to a cave mouth, and the Doctor buzzed the screwdriver again. "Right, of course, you'd hide a graviton particle beam generator in there," he said, and started to walk in.

He stopped. "Doctor?" Trudy asked, before moving closer beside him to investigate what he had seen.

Nothing happened.

They were both back in the Sampson. It seemed very sudden, but it'd also been some time since they'd been standing at the cave mouth. The Doctor asked, very matter-of-factly, "Why are we here? Why did we just come back inside?"

Trudy said she didn't know.

"Ah." The Doctor replied, smiling knowingly. "That's good to know."

"I'll explain later," he said, when asked what he meant. The Doctor asked to head back to base, so she did - now understanding why he was called the "mad man with the box."

"What has Augustine been giving you?" Selfridge asked, as he looked over a report in front of him.

"What?" said the Doctor, taken aback. People were supposed to be impressed when he explained the mystery to them, not asking what he had been smoking.

"You've both been smoking _something, _since you– who are you?" Selfridge's voice had gone cold, as though he was struggling not to run away immediately. Running away would have been rather difficult regardless, since what he was looking at was standing in the only door out of his office. The Doctor turned to follow his gaze.

There was nothing there, standing in the door. It was quite ominous, despite nothing being there.

Selfridge seemed to recover himself, and turned to look at the Doctor. "Is there something I'm forgetting?" he said quizzically.

The Doctor looked towards him, and then down at the five-bar gate marking on the back of his hand. He didn't remember adding to it, but there was one more stroke there now. "No," he said. "Just that the whole base is compromised by aliens."

"What?"

"Why does the Colonel wear an eye-patch?" the Doctor suddenly asked.

It was Selfridge's turn to be taken aback this time. "Because his eye got damaged outside. Why else?"

"Why else indeed," the Doctor said. "It's a little box of gravity, by the way. A graviton."

"...What does that have to do with the Miles' eyepatch?" Selfridge's patience was rapidly wearing down.

"You were asking about it earlier, when I told you there was a graviton beam generator inside one of the mountains."

"And I asked what you had been smoking," Selfridge said, relieved he'd managed to rejoin the conversation.

"Nothing," the Doctor said, as he strolled towards the door. "Although–"

"No," Selfridge said with a cold finality, and the Doctor took the cue to leave.

A very strange feature of Selfridge's office was that there was the only camera in the room and it didn't cover the door, but the designers had assumed that anyone who had any business in the room would continue through the door and into the camera's field of view. This wasn't quite a sound assumption, and if someone had listened later, they would have found this very useful.

"Who are you?" Selfridge asked, his voice gone cold, as though he wanted to run away.

The Doctor turned around, and said, "Parker, don't look away, or you'll forget."

"Forget what?" Selfridge asked, still looking directly at the door.

"That you've ever seen it," the Doctor said. "Just don't look away, not at me or anything else."

There was another voice present, a distinctly colder one, which seemed to echo without anything to echo from. Its owner was not visible on the camera. "More unobtanium is needed," it said, as the Doctor made a mark on the back of his hand. "Make sure it is delivered on time," it continued. There was a very faint sound, of someone taking a step sideways. Then nobody moved for a moment.

"Am I forgetting something?" Selfridge said quizzically.


End file.
